Meeting Reports: A New Era of Emotion Understanding: Insights from ACII 2023

A New Era of Emotion Understanding: Insights from ACII 2023

The ACII 2023 (Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction) conference, held 10- 13 September 2023 at the MIT Media Lab - widely recognized as the birthplace of affective computing, brought together researchers and innovators from the fields of affective computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and affective science. This report aims to distill and articulate the conference's key dialogs, emerging technologies, and pressing ethical and methodological challenges.

Interdisciplinary Synergy for Emotion Understanding

The ACII 2023 conference was a vibrant demonstration of the growing interdependence between AI methods and models of emotional science. For example, there was interdisciplinary dialogue at the EPiC Workshop, a unique half-day event that brought together experts from multiple disciplines (including psychologists, computer scientists, engineers, and physiologists) to advance understanding of emotions using biometric data. Dr. Stanislaw Saganowski (a computer scientist) pointed out that despite the sophistication of the theories used, there were no clear solutions for the emotion prediction challenge associated with the workshop. The results from the challenge highlighted the complexity of predicting emotions from biometric data and the inherent challenges of such predictions. Saganowski suggested several approaches to address this challenge, including improving dataset quality and re-examining the field to identify systemic factors that may limit the effectiveness of models. Echoing this, Dr. Maciej Behnke (a psychologist) emphasized the need for computer scientists to collaborate with psychologists to gain a more comprehensive understanding of emotional states. Behnke noted that significant progress in both affective computing and emotional science relies heavily on interdisciplinary collaboration, blending technical know-how with profound insights into human emotions.

Read the Meeting Report